Long before he helped to create the biggest victory in the
history of Lehigh lacrosse, Kevin Cassese, the Mountain Hawks'
fifth-year coach, was no stranger to huge wins.

As a two-time, first-team All-American midfielder (2002-2003) at
Duke, Cassese led the Blue Devils to a pair of ACC titles and three
NCAA tournament appearances. He went on as a professional to help
the U.S. team win a gold medal at the ILF World Championships. As a
former assistant at Duke, he helped the Blue Devils advance to the
NCAA championship game in 2007. As a Duke graduate, he was
well-schooled in watching big-time accomplishments on the playing
field, starting with its storied men's basketball team.

All of which, for Cassese, adds an interesting twist to what is
happening this week on the Lehigh campus in Bethlehem, Pa.

The Mountain Hawks, champions of the Patriot League for the
first time with a 14-2 record, are preparing to host their
first-ever NCAA tournament game at 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Unseeded
Maryland is paying a first-round visit to the seventh-seeded
Lehigh, where a capacity crowd of 2,000 (seated and standing) will
pack the Ulrich Sports Complex. Tickets sold out in fewer than 24
hours, and the athletic department this week was seeking ways to
fit more spectators in.

For Lehigh, there will never be another time quite like this in
the sport. There will never be another first time. It has produced
a special blast of energy, from the locker room to the campus at
large.

"I can still see [Lehigh attackman] David DiMaria, running
around the field in circles, not knowing what to do," said Cassese,
recalling the final seconds of Lehigh's riveting, 16-14 victory at
Colgate that won the Patriot League title. "The whole experience of
winning the Patriot League has created this huge excitement for the
guys. It's funny. Winning the league was our whole mission all
year. But we never talked about what happens once we get there.

"Now, we get to hit the reset button and create new goals. We
have to answer the question, 'Are we happy just to be here?' These
guys have proved their maturity all year. I haven't seen that
deer-in-the-headlights look in practice this week. I think [Lehigh
and Maryland] are evenly matched. The challenge is it's the big
Maryland against the little Lehigh."

If the Mountain Hawks can make history nearly two months after
its men's basketball team won its first-ever NCAA tournament game
– as a No. 15 seed against Duke, of all schools –
Cassese will be curious to see how Lehigh's fans react.

"It was fun to watch the [Lehigh] campus that night [in March].
People really didn't know what to do or where to go. They were just
running here and there and yelling and screaming," Cassese said.
"At Duke, we knew what to do when we beat Carolina. You lit
bonfires. You burned benches. You gathered in certain areas. It was
a planned celebration. This is uncharted territory for us."

Johns Hopkins Has 'Endured'

If you say that No. 2 seed Johns Hopkins is not the most gifted
and talented team in this year's tournament, you won't get an
argument from 12th-year head coach Dave Pietramala.

But there might not be a team in the field as scarred and
battle-tested as Hopkins, which plays hosts to Stony Brook at 3
p.m. Sunday, and has plenty going for it as it gears up for a run
at its seventh final four and third title under Pietramala.

For starters, the Blue Jays weathered a brutal, two-week storm
– back-to-back losses to Maryland and unranked Navy that
yielded three goals over 90 minutes – by scoring a combined
23 goals in their past two victories. That included a huge overtime
win at top-seeded Loyola, making Hopkins to only team to beat
Loyola.

Go deeper, and you find a minefield of adversity Hopkins has
overcome. It started with the season-ending injury to budding star
defensive midfielder Phil Castranova last fall, and continued with
the exit of midfielder Eric Ruhl from the program.

It continued further with the broken collarbone suffered by
senior attackman Chris Boland, last year's leading scorer, who went
down after scoring his fourth goal in the season opener and missed
seven games. During that stretch, freshman attackman/midfielder
Wells Stanwick went down for three games. Then, junior first-line
midfielder John Greeley blew out his knee against Navy.

In the midst of the parade of injuries, junior midfielder John
Ranagan (14 goals, seven assists) has struggled mightily with his
shooting (16.7 percent). Junior attackman Zach Palmer recently went
through a nearly month-long scoring slump.

"That's a lot for a team to endure," Pietramala said. "But what
we've done as a team this year is to endure."

Duke's Tough Draw

Here's a juicy bit of speculation regarding the tournament
bracket. The talk in some coaching circles is that Duke drew
unseeded Syracuse in the first round for reasons that go beyond
simple selection criteria.

The third-seeded Blue Devils (13-4) seemed destined for a top
two seed, given their uniquely high ranking in RPI (3), strength of
schedule (2) and quality win factor (2). Syracuse, which at 9-7
slipped into the NCAAs by virtue of the AQ it earned as Big East
champions – the Orange crushed Villanova and St. John's
– seemed destined for possibly Hopkins (RPI 4, SOS 14, QWF 4)
or Notre Dame (RPI 5, SOS 16), presumably as No. 3 and No. 4
seeds.

How did Duke end up in a rematch with an improved Syracuse team
it beat during its 10-game winning streak? Possibly by dropping its
regular-season finale, 15-9, in Denver on April 27, the night coach
John Danowski started a team of backups. The Pioneers (8-6) jumped
out to a big early lead, were never threatened, and walked through
the door with a controversial, at-large bid – as the
fourth-place team in the ECAC.

As one coach said, "No one will say it in the open, but
everybody is talking about it. Duke got Syracuse as punishment for
what happened out in Denver."